A young filipino man was surprised when a guy reached out to him on Grindr… to chat. Not to hookup. To chat.

“He started sending me messages in August,” the man writes in a new post published by Gay Star News. “He initiated conversations with a ‘Good Morning!’ or a ‘How are you?’ and it was charming.”

The whole thing kind of caught the man off guard. Until then, he had only ever used Grindr to hookup with guys. Not to, like, get to know them. The guy didn’t even have any risque photos of himself on the app.

After a few months of chatting, they agreed to meet up. The man admits he was still unsure what the guy’s intentions were.

“Typical me, I asked, ‘Is this wholesome or a hook-up?’” he writes. “He said that he wanted to get to know me. Perfect answer, right? So movie date it was.”

They met up for dinner and a movie. Immediately, sparks flew.

“It didn’t take long for us to hold hands,” he recalls. “Anyone who saw us would quickly conclude that this was a date. Our body language was too obvious.”

Dinner was great. The movie was great. The conversation was great. The chemistry was great. Everything was great.

At the end of the evening, they kissed. He recalls the special moment in vivid detail:

We kissed. Lightly. Lips brushing lips. Our cheeks slowly and slightly rubbing each other. His face breathing on my neck. It was hot. But it was also sweet. It was coming from a space of deep longing. We aroused each other without going too far.

Then they said their goodbyes.

Even though they had met on a hookup app, the topic of sex didn’t come up once during the entire night.

“Perfect while it lasted, it was a reawakening of my body, of my soul, of my heart,” the man writes. “It was a series of good moments that allowed me to feel human and much of a man again.”

“I’ll let that one night, with that one man, stay with me this way. Ordinary from the outside, but magical inside. At least for me.”

I guess my original post wasn’t clear. It has nothing to do with the guys in the story. It’s that apparently 2 guys meeting on a hookup app and going on a date instead of just having sex is so unique and shocking that it warrants an article written about it.

They went to dinner and a movie, held hands, had a goodnight kiss, and doesn’t sound like they saw each other again. Is there another point that I’m just missing? Or is the article just to trumpet the fact that 2 gay men did something just like regular people do?